Cuban ambassador defends literacy scheme for Maori

By HELEN TUNNAH deputy political editor

Cuba's Ambassador to New Zealand has defended his country's literacy rates and the sending of education workers here to work with Maori.

Miguel Ramirez said Cuba had taught literacy programmes throughout Latin America, using a model based on radio and television.

It had earned his nation international awards, including one from the United Nations, for eradicating illiteracy.

The tertiary institute Te Wananga o Aotearoa has used several advisers from Cuba to help in setting up a model to reduce illiteracy among Maori.

A pilot programme for 500 students has been running this year, and if it works Te Wananga will seek Government funding to extend it to all its 35,000 students.

Act MP Rodney Hide said this week he was "staggered" to think Cuba could teach New Zealand anything.

Mr Ramirez said Mr Hide's words were "full of hatred".

"Yes, we are a poor country. If we have not been able to put more food on the table of the Cuban people it is because we have been facing economic difficulties as a result of a ... blockade from the United States Government for more than 40 years."

The Herald was wrong to say Cuba had jailed writers and poets. Mr Ramirez said there had not been a single case of torture since Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

Amnesty International, which has not been allowed to visit Cuba for many years, lists on its websites political opponents and writers who have been jailed and ill-treated by the regime.

Mr Hide said yesterday that Mr Ramirez had been to the "Joe Stalin school of international diplomacy".

He had nothing against Cubans, but did not like their communist regime. He would continue to ask if any taxpayers' money was spent on the programme.